A Streetcar Named Desire

1. A Streetcar Named Desire By: Tennessee Williams

2. Learning Goals • Students will: • Explicate and appreciate the power of visual and auditory expressionistic elements to help shape set design, narrative, characterization, and theme in the building of dramatic scripts. • Exercise skills of explication. • Demonstrate critical analysis. • Recognize elements that build artistic tension in dramatic scripts. • Experience growth in the writing process, oral skills, skills of research, and contextual analysis.

3. Your thoughts? • What could this play possibly be about?

4. Would you have guessed… • Money • Wealth • Status • Family

5. What about…? • Lies • Abuse • Relationships • Appearances

6. And how about…? • Homosexuality • Suicide • Sex • Mental Health

7. A Streetcar Named Desire • Desire: A strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

8. What’s it all about? • Fantasy and the inability to over come reality • The protagonist Blanche DuBois is a classical example of a romantic; she has a lot of ‘desires’ …hopes, wishes, wants and dreams. • However the reader quickly realizes that this play is a work of social realism

9. Social Realism • An example of the everyday working person, the poor and those who are critical of the social structures that maintain this position in society.

10. Characters - Blanche DuBois (Protagonist) • Stella’s older sister • High school English Teacher (in Laurel Mississippi) – forced to leave her job • Leaving her a talkative and fragile woman • Age 30 (approx.)

11. Blanche (Continued) • Blanche is forced to stay with her sister and her husband (the Kowalski’s) as she has no job and has lost the family home (Belle Reve), leaving her broke and homeless. • Despite these circumstances she puts on a false appearance of a woman with dignity and class • In reality she has overpowering sexual urges; she has had many lovers • This unstable appearance of who she really is and who she thinks she is develops throughout the play as misfortune continues to find her. • Inevitably her truths are revealed, and they come back to destroy what is left of her

12. Stella Kowalski (Blanche’s younger sister) • Age 25 (approx.) • She has a mild disposition, much different than her vulgar outlandish neighbours • She comes from the same aristocratic heritage as Blanche, but she jumped that sinking ship in her late teens looking to make a life of her own in New Orleans.

13. Stella Continued • She married Stanley a lower class man, with whom she shares a very robust sexual relationship with • Her relationship is seen as both animal and spiritual; but at the same time is often violent • Stella is conflicted by the arrival of her sister of her loyalty to her blood family and her marital family – Ultimately choosing her husband despite of what her sister tries to share about him (her ability to live in denial links her to her disillusioned sister more than she thinks)

14. Stanley Kowalski • Stella’s husband • Age 30 (approx.) • A force to be reckoned with • Loyal to his friends • Passionate with his wife • Heartlessly cruel towards Blanche • Polish ancestry (representing heterogeneous America)

15. Stanley Continued • Aims to destroy Blanche’s social pretentions • Works as an auto parts salesman • He has no patience for distortion of the truth • He devolves within the play to an aggressive disturbing degenerate

16. Harold ‘Mitch’ Mitchell • Stanley’s army friend, coworker and poker buddy • Dates Blanch until he finds out she is a liar • Age 30 (approx.) • Clumsy, sweaty and unrefined • Interested in body building • More sensitive and gentlemanly – lives with his dying mother

17. Eunice • Stella’s friend and upstairs neighbor and landlady • Lives with her husband Steve • Represents the low-class carnal life that Stella has chosen as well. • Eunice accepts her husbands affection despite his nature to turn violent and abuse her.

18. Allan Grey (Never appears on stage) • Young guy, poetic aspirations • Blanche’s initial love interest – they were married as teenagers • Their relationship ended when Blanche caught him in bed with an older male friend • Blanche is disgusted by his homosexuality – which leaves him feeling like he has no choice but to commit suicide • Allan’s death symbolically marked the end of Blanche’s sexual innocence and has haunted her

19. Young Collector • Teenager who comes to collect newspaper when Blanche is home alone • Blanche is inappropriate and hits on him; finally kisses him • He represents Blanche’s obsession with youth and things she cannot have • She has an unhealthy sexual occupation with teenage boys that appears throughout the play

20. ShepHuntleigh (Never appears on stage) • Former suitor of Blanche • Reunited with her a year before she moves to New Orleans (while vacationing in Miami) • Blanche looks to this married man to support her and Stella financially – if they were to leave Stanley • As Blanche’s mental stability deteriorates she dreams Shep will save her

21. Other Characters • Steve: Stanley’s poker buddy (Eunice’s husband), hot blooded, physically fit and abusive towards his wife • Pablo: Stanley’s poker buddy, also fit and brutish he is Hispanic and his friendship with the men is to emphasize the cultural diversity of their neighborhood • Negro Woman: talks with Eunice, and finds the sexual interactions between Stanley and Stella amusing. • Doctor: Arrives to deal with the debilitated Blanche, he seems heartless but eventually shows a warmer side

22. Mexican Woman: Vendor of funeral décor, frightens Blanche • Nurse: Also called the ‘Matron’ she works with the Doctor to care for Blanche in the end of the play, she has a talent for subduing hysterical patients • Shaw: A supply man who works with Stanley, he provides Stanley with the information about Blanche’s disreputable past as he regularly travelled in Mississippi • Prostitute: Foreshadows Blanche’s break down

23. Plot Synopsis • Blanche a school teacher arrives at her sister Stella’s apartment once losing her job. The two sisters who are not incredibly close have an unspoken loyalty. Blanche arrives intending to stay for an unspecified amount of time. Blanche tells her sister of the loss of Belle Reve, their ancestral home following the death of all the remaining relatives.

24. Continued • Blanche has no money for a hotel but complains about the cramped quarters of her sisters two-room apartment in a noisy, working class neighborhood. Blanche believes she is above this place and the people automatically making her unlikable to Stella’s husband Stanley. • Stella and Stanley’s marriage reveals itself with the arrival of Blanche, Stanley dislikes her even further as she starts to win the affection of his friend Mitch. • The tension between Stanley and Blanche leads to physical violence between Stanley and Stella.

25. Continued • Once learning of his violent nature Blanche encourages her sister to leave her husband and seek a man whose social status equals theirs. • Blanch deploys her plan of getting Shep the millionaire to provide for them • Stanley catches wind of this talk and says he will spill the beans about Blanche’s disreputable past of she continues to try and influence her sister • She goes on to have a relationship with Mitch that angers Stanley to the point where he comes home one night when the four of them were to be having dinner and shares Blanche’s sexually mischievous past.

26. Continued • He outlines that she was evicted from her home due to lack of payment on her mortgage and that she lost her job due to a sexual relationship with a teenage boy. • Stella angry with her husband goes into premature labour ending the fight. • Later Mitch arrives drunk and repeats all he learned about Blanche telling her he can never marry her, but attempts to have sex with her all the same knowing she has no morals. • Stanley returns from the birth of his child and as Blanche rambles in a drunk disillusioned state antagonizing him Stanley gets fed up and forces himself upon her. • This is the breaking point for Blanche she becomes completely deluded, despite her aims to tell her sister what had happened Stella sides with Stanley and Blanche ends up being reduced to a child like state placed in a mental institution .

27. Major Themes • Fantasy vs. Reality • Sex and Death • Dependence on Men • Social Status and Structures

28. Motifs • Light: Blanche avoids light as it will reveal her age and defy her beauty • Bathing: Bathing is a calming mechanism, washing away sexual sins, trying erase the past • Drunkenness: Alcoholism, disillusion with reality

29. Symbols • Shadows and cries – descent in to madness, loss of sanity loss of reality • Vasouviana Polka – plays at various points depicting Blanche’s remorse over Allen’s death – evokes Blanche’s loss of innocence • “It’s Only a Paper Moon” – Ballad about the world as a phony fantasy, lovers who believe in an imagined reality… • Meat – Sexual innuendo

30. As you read the play… • Remember to record any details about the setting.